If you have ever felt the loneliness of disappearing into the void when your phone’s battery dies then this app is designed for you. Go and download Die With Me right now…
App developer Dries Depoorter came up with the strange concept after being lost in a strange city, an idea which eventually turned into Die With Me: a chat-room based app that you can only access when your smartphone battery is on five percent or less.
The app is available on iOS and Android to download now, but you will only be able to access it when you… er… when your phone is about to die. In this chat-room other battery-challenged individuals lurk, so you will have some company while you take your last few… clicks.
Explaining the inspiration behind the app Die With Me co-creator Dries Depoorter said, “I was in a city that I didn’t know on my way back to the hotel, and my phone battery was low. I was really stressed about this as it was already turning to night. At that moment, I had the idea for an app that you can only use when you have low battery. But I didn’t know how it would work until we came up with the idea of making it a public chat-room.”
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The beta version of the app was demonstrated at the DocLab Academy program for interactive artists, which forms part of the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, by Depoorter and his co-creator David Surprenant. Though the beta went well it later proved to be quite tricky submitting Die With Me to the Apple App Store. Google’s store passed the app with little bother. Apple… didn’t seem to get it.
Considering their iOS struggles, nobody thought the app would shoot up to number 15 in the App Store’s Entertainment category. To date, Die With Me has recorded a crazy half million messages and have a average of 8 people in the battery-deprived room.
So, if you have ever felt lonely and about to… well… kick the connectivity bucket, check out this app. You might even make lifelong friends – if your battery lasts long enough to get an name and some contact info. Ordinarily we would advise keeping your battery charged but we are letting our batteries drain just to check this one out.
